Ms. Coggins' Classroom News

May 6, 2013

Dear Families,

~ We are doing a novel study in literacy on the book that we will be protraying for the first grade play.

~ In math, we are studying all things about 2s, 5s, and 10s.  These number units develop ideas about counting and quantity, the composition of numbers, and the operations of addition and subtraction.  Students will revisit the number sequence as well as counting to 120.  In addition, students encounter situations that provide concrete models for counting by numbers other than 1.  As students solve such problems and think about ways to organize objects so they are easier to count and combine, they begin to make sense of what it means to count by groups.  Finally, this unit focuses on achieving fluency with the 2-addend combination of 10 and introduces the idea of equivalence (e.g., 8+5=10+3)

~ In science, we are studying about plants.

UPCOMING EVENTS!

~We have begun working on the First Grade Play.  The Play is 05/30/13 @ 9:00 & 11:00.
~ 05/24/13 Storytelling Festival - Mrs Tish has volunteered as our class storyteller
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We are taking AR Tests on the Take Home Books daily.  Your child will be ready to take an AR Test on a Take Home Book when they have read the book at least 3 times and can tell you what the book is about.  Instead of sending me a note that your child is ready for an AR test on a Take Home Book, I would like to make a change:  When you put your initials next to the title of the Take Home Book, that is your signal to me that your child is ready for an AR Test.  Students may write book reports for one book per week.

 

My philosophy about the AR Program is that this is a way for us to boost students' self-efficacy about reading and taking reading tests.  Let me just say that the vocabulary and the sentence structure of the AR tests is more difficult than the book itself.   (Although the questions are mostly factual recall--they are not higher order thinking questions.) Therefore, when they take the test in first grade, we will help them read the questions during the test and highly encourage them to look up the answer for each and every question on the test.  This is called "referencing the text" and is a habit and a skill that that will serve them well for the rest of their academic careers.  You will find this range on the STAR Reader Diagnostic Report that I sent home with the report cards. 

 

Our students check out books from the Media Center for AR points, as well.  All books that are chosen are AR books.  When your child has read the library book 3 times and can tell you what the book is about, they may take a test on the book.  Just write the title in one of the spaces in the Take Home Book Journal and that will be the signal that they are ready for the test.

 

 

I continue to encourage you to work with your child on their addition and subtraction math facts from 0 to 20.  During the Kindergarden year we memorized the facts to 10 and this year we will need to memorize the facts to 20.  The web-based program, "XtraMath," is very good at motivating students to memorize their facts.  Please check out the logins that I have provided in their agendas.

 

We are using the Agendas.  To make it easy for your child to find the current week and to write their assignments, I have cut the corners of the agenda so they can flip to the right page really easily.  I would like to ask you to please clip the corner of one page each week so that they will be able to quickly get to the current week's page.  That would be such a help for them. Students will copy the daily homework in their Agendas for you to review and sign that they have completed it.  We copy our Spelling words in the Agenda each week.  They can study them using any of the fun activities such as clay, shaving cream, cereal,etc.

         

Have a great week!

Sincerely,
Lynn Coggins